Yeah, I've got some friends who are on the road a lot in their cars, and ever since they began subscribing to Sirius, they've quit listening to any other radio altogether ( including college radio that they used to listen to and support with contributions, but don't anymore because of satellite radio ).

The problem I foresee with their adding a station like WCSB is that the satellite companies are owned by shareholders. Since being a freeform station is one of the most appealing aspects of WCSB, becoming involved in something that necessitates the pleasing of shareholders might not jive with the independent and non-commerical aspects of the programming on WCSB ( and other great college radio stations ). It would be great to have the exposure, and might act to motivate the programmers at whatever stations are chosen to "be all they can be" and offer up 110% of their best knowing that millions of people are likely to tune in - but would that be worth the cost of freedom? Perhaps there would be a team of people at the satellite company who would begin screening non-commercial radio stations and looking to add certain programs ( not whole stations ) to their mix - but how would that work logistically? And how likely is it that a corporation would pay someone to spend the time doing that?

I do not think in any way it would be a good idea or necessary. I foresee satellite radio going as quickly as it came in.

This is why:

The reason why this merge was proposed was because both companies where loosing money partially because they were paying tons of money to celebrity DJ/radio personalities to be on their service as the two services competed against each other.

Since there is (was) only two satellite radio providers, the big deal involving the merge was that the merge would create a monopoly since there would be only one company controlling all of the satellite radio channels.

The Justification from the FCC for the merge of XM and Sirius follows the following logic. Since the medium of satellite radio is unique to only the two companies due to this the merge would make the new company a monopoly of satellite radio. However it still has at least two worthy competitors in radio services thus it can be allowed to merge since a monopoly by definition has no competition. Terrestrial radio and the internet are obviously that competition.

Even though some people may think terrestrial radio is near it's end, it has one thing that satellite radio doesn't have. Commercials and tons of it, which equals money.

One of the main selling points of Satellite radio is that it is "commercial free". This does not mean that their shows don't have sponsors and that you won't hear the occasional product placement but what they have in programming and content they lack in funds compared to terrestrial radio.

Most people see the internet right now as static medium regardless of a laptop. However with new products developing and becoming cheaper and more accessible like the Iphone along with several other smart phones, the internet is more portable than it's ever been. All it would take right now to listen to your favorite Internet radio station in car stereo (WCSB of course) is to hook up your Iphone to the input jack that most new car radios come with anyways and presto!

New gadgets aside, cities around the world are developing a city wide wi-fi networks including in the US. Grand Haven, Michigan in 2004 was the first city in the US to complete a city wide WI-FI network. At the rate this is going pretty soon all cities in the US will be completely wireless as well as everything in between them.

Vehicles pretty soon will have built in touch screens that can access the internet. Some of them already do but are limited to GPS function and or on star.
Believe you me if a fridge can have internet access so can your car.

The cost of running an internet radio station is almost nothing compared to what it takes to run a satellite radio studio. In addition to the convenience and multi use of the internet, advertising is also easier and cheaper to do on the internet without necessarily interrupting a service.

This is why I believe that it is important to invest our time and effort on improving our internet service and implement archiving for our listeners, especially the local ones that suffer through summers of Christian Interference.

The non-profit agreement is just an extra thing they added so they could justify the merge.